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Meta has agreed to make changes to its “pay or consent” business model in the EU, seeking to agree a deal that avoids further regulatory fines at a time when the bloc’s digital rule book is drawing anger from US authorities.
On Tuesday, the European Commission announced that the social media giant had offered users an alternative choice of Facebook and Instagram services that would show them less personalised advertisements.
The offer follows an EU investigation into Meta’s policy of requiring users either to consent to data tracking or pay for an ad-free service. The Financial Times reported on optimism that an agreement could be reached between the parties in October.
The commission in April had already fined Meta €200mn following its initial findings, ordering the group to change its model. If the company failed to comply, it could have faced daily penalties. These can escalate over time and reach up to 5 per cent of average daily worldwide revenue.
Regulators will now assess those changes before potentially closing the probe. “The case is not closed, but it is a very good step forward and we will now monitor it from here,” the commission said.
The investigation took place under the EU’s landmark Digital Markets Act, which is designed to tackle the power of Big Tech giants and is among the bloc’s tech regulations that have drawn fierce pushback from the Trump administration.
The announcement comes only days after Brussels launched an antitrust investigation into Meta over its new policy on artificial intelligence providers’ access to WhatsApp — a case that underscores the commission’s readiness to use its powers to challenge Big Tech.
That upcoming European probe follows the launch of recent DMA investigations into Google’s parent company Alphabet over its ranking of news outlets in search results and Amazon and Microsoft over their cloud computing services.
Last week, the commission also fined Elon Musk’s X €120mn for breaking the bloc’s digital transparency rules. The X sanction led to heavy criticism from a wide range of US government officials, including US secretary of state Marco Rubio who said the fine is “an attack on all American tech platforms and the American people by foreign governments”.
Andrew Puzder, the US ambassador to the EU, said the fine “is the result of EU regulatory over-reach” and said the Trump administration opposes “censorship and will challenge burdensome regulations that target US companies abroad”.
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